Dry Cleaners
The Chinese dry cleaners I usually send my bloody clothes to delivered back to me yesterday a Soprani jacket, two white Brooks Brothers shirts and a tie from Agnes B. still covered with flecks of someone’s blood. I have a lunch appointment at noon—in forty minutes—and beforehand I decide to stop by the cleaners and complain. In addition to the Soprani jacket, the shirts and tie, I bring along a bag of bloodstained sheets that also need cleaning. The Chinese dry cleaners is located twenty blocks up from my apartment on the West Side, almost by Columbia, and since I’ve never actually been there before the distance shocks me (previously my clothes were always picked up after a phone call from my apartment and then were delivered back within twenty-four hours). Because of this excursion I have no time for a morning workout, and since I overslept, owing to a late-night–predawn coke binge with Charles Griffin and Hilton Ashbury that started innocently enough at a magazine party none of us were invited to at M.K. and ended at my automated teller sometime around five, I’ve missed The Patty Winters Show which actually was a repeat of an interview with the President, so it doesn’t really matter, I guess.
I’m tense, my hair is slicked back, Wayfarers on, my skull is aching, I have a cigar—unlit—clenched between my teeth, am wearing a black Armani suit, a white cotton Armani shirt and a silk tie, also by Armani. I look sharp but my stomach is doing flip-flops, my brain is churning. On my way into the Chinese cleaners I brush past a crying bum, an old man, forty or fifty, fat and grizzled, and just as I’m opening the door I notice, to top it off, that he’s also blind and I step on his foot, which is actually a stump, causing him to drop his cup, scattering change all over the sidewalk. Did I do this on purpose? What do you think? Or did I do this accidentally?
Then for ten minutes I point out the stains to the tiny old Chinese woman who, I’m supposing, runs the cleaners and she’s even brought her husband out from the back of the shop since I can’t understand a word she’s saying. But the husband remains utterly mute and doesn’t bother to translate. The old woman keeps jabbering in what I guess is Chinese and finally I have to interrupt.
“Listen, wait …” I hold up a hand with the cigar in it, the Soprani jacket draped over my other arm. “You’re not … shhh, wait … shhh, you are not giving me valid reasons.”
The Chinese woman keeps squealing something, grabbing at the arms of the jacket with a tiny fist. I brush her hand away and, leaning in, speak very slowly. “What are you trying to say to me?”
She keeps yipping, wild-eyed. The husband holds the two sheets he’s taken out of the bag in front of him, both splattered with dried blood, and stares at them dumbly.
“Bleach-ee?” I ask her. “Are you trying to say bleach-ee?” I shake my head, disbelieving. “Bleach-ee? Oh my god.”
She keeps pointing at the sleeves on the Soprani jacket and when she turns to the two sheets behind her, the yipping voice rises another octave.
“Two things,” I say, talking over her. “One. You can’t bleach a Soprani. Out of the question. Two”—and then louder, still over her—“two, I can only get these sheets in Santa Fe. These are very expensive sheets and I really need them clean.…” But she’s still talking and I’m nodding as if I understand her gibberish, then I break into a smile and lean right into her face. “If-you-don’t-shut-your-f*cking-mouth-I-will-kill-you-are-you-understanding-me?”
The Chinese woman’s panicked jabbering speeds up incoherently, her eyes still wide. Her face overall, maybe because of the wrinkles, seems oddly expressionless. Pathetically I point at the stains again, but then realize this is useless and lower my hand, straining to understand what she’s saying. Then, casually, I cut her off, talking over her again.
“Now listen, I have a very important lunch meeting”—I check my Rolex—“at Hubert’s in thirty minutes”—then looking back at the woman’s flat, slanty-eyed face—“and I need those … no, wait, twenty minutes. I have a lunch meeting at Hubert’s in twenty minutes with Ronald Harrison and I need those sheets cleaned by this afternoon.”
But she’s not listening; she keeps blabbering something in the same spastic, foreign tongue. I have never firebombed anything and I start wondering how one goes about it—what materials are involved, gasoline, matches … or would it be lighter fluid?
“Listen.” I snap out of it, and sincerely, in singsong, leaning into her face—her mouth moving chaotically, she turns to her husband, who nods during a rare, brief pause—I tell her, “I cannot understand you.”
I’m laughing, appalled at how ridiculous this situation is, and slapping a hand on the counter look around the shop for someone else to talk to, but it’s empty, and I mutter, “This is crazy.” I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face, and then abruptly stop laughing, suddenly furious. I snarl at her, “You’re a fool. I can’t cope with this.”
She jabbers something back at me.
“What?” I ask spitefully. “You didn’t hear me? You want some ham? Is that what you just said? You want … some ham?”
She grabs at the arm of the Soprani jacket again. Her husband stands behind the counter, sullen and detached.
“You … are … a … fool!” I bellow.
She jabbers back, undaunted, pointing relentlessly at the stains on the sheets.
“Stupid bitch-ee? Understand?” I shout, red-faced, on the verge of tears. I’m shaking and I yank the jacket away from her, muttering “Oh Christ.”
Behind me the door opens and a bell chimes and I compose myself. Close my eyes, breathe in deeply, remind myself about stopping in at the tanning salon after lunch, maybe Hermes or—
“Patrick?”
Jolted by the sound of a real voice, I turn around and it’s someone I recognize from my building, someone I’ve seen a number of times lingering in the lobby, staring admiringly at me whenever I run into her. She’s older than me, late twenties, okay-looking, a little overweight, wearing a jogging suit—from where, Bloomingdale’s? I have no idea—and she’s … beaming. Taking off her sunglasses she offers a wide smile. “Hi Patrick, I thought it was you.”
Having no idea what her name is I sigh a muted “Hello” then very quickly mumble something that resembles a woman’s name and then I just stare at her, stumped, drained, trying to control my viciousness, the Chinese woman still screeching behind me. Finally I clap my hands together and say, “Well.”
She stands there, confused, until nervously moving toward the counter, ticket in hand. “Isn’t it ridiculous? Coming all the way up here, but you know they really are the best.”
“Then why can’t they get these stains out?” I ask patiently, still smiling, both eyes closed until the Chinese woman has finally shut up and then I open them. “I mean can you talk to these people or something?” I delicately propose. “I’m not getting anywhere.”
She moves toward the sheet the old man holds up. “Oh my, I see,” she murmurs. The moment she tentatively touches the sheet the old lady starts jabbering away, and ignoring her, the girl asks me, “What are those?” She looks at the stains again and says, “Oh my.”
“Um, well …” I look over at the sheets, which are really quite a mess. “It’s, um, cranberry juice, cranapple juice.”
She looks at me and nods, as if unsure, then timidly ventures, “It doesn’t look like cranberry, I mean cranapple, to me.”
I stare at the sheets for a long time before stammering, “Well, I mean, um, it’s really … Bosco. You know, like …” I pause. “Like a Dove Bar. It’s a Dove Bar … Hershey’s Syrup?”
“Oh yeah.” She nods, understanding, maybe a hint of skepticism. “Oh my.”
“Listen, if you could talk to them”—I reach over, yanking the sheet out of the old man’s hand—“I would really appreciate it.” I fold the sheet and lay it gently on the counter, then, checking my Rolex again, explain, “I’m really late. I have a lunch appointment at Hubert’s in fifteen minutes.” I move toward the door of the dry cleaners and the Chinese woman starts yapping again, desperately, shaking a finger at me. I glare at her, forcing myself not to mimic the hand gestures.
“Hubert’s? Oh really?” the girl asks, impressed. “It moved uptown, right?”
“Yeah, well, oh boy, listen, I’ve got to go.” I pretend to spot an oncoming cab across the street through the glass door and, faking gratitude, tell her, “Thank you, uh … Samantha.”
“It’s Victoria.”
“Oh right, Victoria.” I pause. “Didn’t I say that?”
“No. You said Samantha.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” I smile. “I’m having problems.”
“Maybe we could have lunch one day next week?” she suggests hopefully, moving toward me while I’m backing out of the store. “You know, I’m downtown near Wall Street quite often.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Victoria.” I force an apologetic grin, avert my gaze from her thighs. “I’m at work all the time.”
“Well, what about, oh, you know, maybe a Saturday?” Victoria asks, afraid she’ll offend.
“Next Saturday?” I ask, checking my Rolex again.
“Yeah.” She shrugs timidly.
“Oh. Can’t, I’m afraid. Matinee of Les Misérables,” I lie. “Listen. I’ve really got to go. I’ll …” I run a hand over my hair and mutter “Oh Christ” before forcing myself to add, “I’ll call you.”
“Okay.” She smiles, relieved. “Do.”
I glare at the Chinese woman once more and rush the hell out of there, dashing after a nonexistent cab, and then I slow down a block or two up past the cleaners and—
suddenly I find myself eyeing a very pretty homeless girl sitting on the steps of a brownstone on Amsterdam, a Styrofoam coffee cup resting on the step below her feet, and as if guided by radar I move toward her, smiling, fishing around in my pocket for change. Her face seems too young and fresh and tan for a homeless person’s; it makes her plight all the more heartbreaking. I examine her carefully in the seconds it takes to move from the edge of the sidewalk to the steps leading up to the brownstone where she sits, her head bowed down, staring dumbly into her empty lap. She looks up, unsmiling, after she notices me standing over her. My nastiness vanishes and, wanting to offer something kind, something simple, I lean in, still staring, eyes radiating sympathy into her blank, grave face, and dropping a dollar into the Styrofoam cup I say, “Good luck.”
Her expression changes and because of this I notice the book—Sartre—in her lap and then the Columbia book bag by her side and finally the tan-colored coffee in the cup and my dollar bill floating in it and though this all happens in a matter of seconds it’s played out in slow motion and she looks at me, then at the cup, and shouts, “Hey, what’s your goddamn problem?” and frozen, hunched over the cup, cringing, I stutter, “I didn’t … I didn’t know it was … full,” and shaken, I walk away, hailing a taxi, and heading toward Hubert’s in it I hallucinate the buildings into mountains, into volcanoes, the streets become jungles, the sky freezes into a backdrop, and before stepping out of the cab I have to cross my eyes in order to clear my vision. Lunch at Hubert’s becomes a permanent hallucination in which I find myself dreaming while still awake.